Slum Enterprise - Chapter 26

CHAPTER 26

 It smelled like instant coffee; the tent was steaming from Lee’s little cooking stove. Chester Scott rustled the tent fabric to let him know he was coming in.

 “Howdy, I’m off. Murphy took over. Don’t worry, I gave him my broomstick,” Scott said as he bent down. He looked like he had a hunchback while he sat down next to Lee on a small Moroccan meditation pillow he had brought with him.

Lee didn't respond; he fell down and just stirred the coffee in a stainless steel pot that was starting to rust on the outside handle. “Maybe Scott had something interesting to say to pass the time,” he thought.

 “There hasn't been a good chance to talk… I'm hoping that you have a few minutes to lend me your ears; you look positively swamped in work, young lad.”

 “Go for it,” Lee said, his voice scratchy from the inside air quality. “Want an afternoon to pick me up?” Lee took a rag, lifted the pot, and turned off the gas. Scott positioned his pillow to face Lee directly; he spoke in a low volume and looked nervous.

 “Lad, the other labs…” He paused for a moment for a weird dramatic effect.”

 “What about them?”

 “Air, Industrial, Medical, Chemical, Media, R&D, and us, Liquid." Scott whispered.

 “Scott, I know at the other labs I used to work in, Air Lab, remember, I got my start there 5 years ago.” Lee replied.

 “Keep your voice down from now on, comrade." Scott moved his face right to Lee's. He still wore his military outfit.

 “This military uniform isn't just for show; I'm on active duty for the nation, my internal nation. I wear this out of protest. The soldier dies for the rich while they get the luxury apartments and safety. Those bastards thought they could brainwash me. I was to be a fucking interrogator during a war long forgotten… don't ask.” Scott lifted his sleeve and checked his watch and jumped up to observe over the tent walls. HR SWAT left their positions; it was a shift change. Scott knew he had limited time to talk to Lee.

 I’ve done my duty for my nations; they have given me nothing but shit in return besides no property tax. There isn't anything left to brainwash. I've been brainwashed to hunt, kill, and carry out missions with no questions asked. I've been in the shit, just like the shit I see in here. In these slums, all we do is try and survive and cling to a paycheck to continue our pointless way of life. We live in the days when nobody cares about anybody else anymore. This mindset is ruining the world.” Scott refocused.

“Never mind that, I've been in contact with the other labs.” Scott said, and Lee leaned in closer; the pores on Scott's nose were like moon craters. Lee didn't know about Scott's previous life in the special services; he always admired military guys.

 “I’ve got others in the game, building a secret militia with the guys in the lab departments.”

 “Alright, you got my attention,” Lee said.

 “Only a few rendezvous; they all agreed that the time is now for banding all the labs together. Let's become a force to reckon with, Lee. No one cares about us. I bet the execs are placing bets on which department will be wiped out next. I heard Joe and Matthew are gearing up to change jobs, probably to engineering, just because they have that 4-year degree they haven't used for like 20 years. Once you go into management, Lee, sorry to say you start to lose everything that makes you, you. Soft skills filled the void, leaving an empty husk of no actual skill sets. They want the easy way out. As for us, we have the hard way. Step one is to get the entirety of the lab departments as a unit.”

 “Wait, hold on, the other labs are on board? What about HR SWAT?” Lee said. It was cold, but he still felt sweat forming on his back.

 “We’re playing with fire, Scott; I don't want this getting out of hand.”

 “Lee, that's the whole point. Take a goddamn risk once in a while. You think we have more than one life to feel things out?” Scott said. “It's time to join the corps, Mr Lee Collins, you maggot.” Scott chuckled and grabbed Lee’s shoulder and shook it in a friendly way. Lee gave a forced, crooked smile.

 “Ah, shit Scott…”

 “We need answers. What is the CEO’s end game? What is the purpose of this.” Scott rolled his eyes around like he was possessed. “What happened at the conference 2 months ago? The other departments are creating larger factions, leaving us in the dust. Look at your team, for Christ's sake; they lie on their bug-infested cots staring at pocket screens, wasting away with no purpose.”

 This was true; for 2 months, Lee's team slowly rotted away. Pocket screens were the only escape from existential dread.

 “You heard?”

 “Heard what?”

 “About the Finance Department?” Scott confirmed.

 “No.”

 “They are smeared butter on warm bread, whipped out, liquidated.” Scott crossed his legs on the pillow like a Buddhist monk.

“Procurement and shipping banded together, and war was planned against the finance teams. All three of these departments shared the same building, over by the highway on-ramp.” Lee started to connect the dots.

 “Procurement and shipping hated finance, finally fed up with all their bullshit. Finance withheld budget money, leaving Procurement and Shipping dead in the water.” Scott said. He could hear the footsteps of the incoming HR SWAT shift. He spoke faster and quieter.

 “They all charged the fucking barbed-wire fences; they even took out 3 HR SWAT. Finance didn't stand a chance. They went in, beat everyone down, and raided the hot tents. Lo and behold, the VP and director were salivating away on updating their resumes. They pummeled the director and tied up the VP, the big fish. He was hauled back to the shipping docks; they used him as ransom to get to the CEO; they wanted answers just like us. The motherfuckers had the balls to pave the way, open the floodgates; this is our ticket in.”

 “Go on,” Lee urged.

 “As you have it, the CEO heard the news and sent executive assistance down to the docks to negotiate.”

 “And?” Lee was completely encapsulated by the story; it was a slice of action, something different he hadn't felt in some time. Life in the slum had a secret potency of pain; that pain was dullness.

 “The executive assistant allowed one member of the attacker's crew to come along with the VP and trade for information.” Scott said with a sad expression. “The guy never came back; they got him killed or fired. The VP was never seen again either, likely outsourced to another cushy VP job at the 500 monopoly… Do you watch the news?”

 “If everything is news, nothing is news,” Lee said with conviction. “I'm sick and tired of it; it only makes me mad as hell.”

 “You're behind the curve; you have no idea what's going on.”

 “I can say the same thing about you; you think you know more than I do. I see my reality through my eyes, you see it through your screens, and you have no idea what is true. Unless I'm schizoid, I know what's coming into my retina.” Lee snapped back. Scott shook it off and got back to business.

 “Anyway, I have a plan; let's follow in our fallen brothers' footsteps.”

 “Wait, what the hell happened to the rest of Procurement and Shipping?” Lee questioned.

 “It's all shut down; everyone was fired and given no severance, and the shipping dock is boarded up with big DO NOT ENTER signs on all the fencing. Procurement was bulldozed by a mini excavator they could fit through the back dock garage doors; it's flat and barren now.” Scott looked down and wrung his hands; he didn't have gloves.

 “Ashame, no more weapons coming in; what we have is what we have.” Lee said. He questioned whether Scott's militia had enough material, weapons, food, and able bodies to pull this off.

 Aren’t you sick and tired of all this?” Scott said again. “Look around, Stan is on the fritz, Murphy picked up smoking again and lost his wife and kids in a divorce, and you sit here sipping shitty coffee and mumbling incoherence to the foul-smelling shanty town we have created for ourselves while the team you lead rots away. The breaking point is just over the horizon. Shipping and Procurement has started the downfall; a weak point was exposed. We have to finish it. Think about it, we have eyes in every campus building, and we have the highest employee count. The higher-ups know this; this is why all the labs were split up at the inception of this campus layout. You have my word, Lee. I’ve talked with the other senior lab techs; they want answers, they are struggling to keep afloat, and we can become prophets, truth tellers, we can become the divine saviors of this strange world.”

 Lee was deep in thought. His mind raced at what answers the CEO would reveal. But it was too risky, too dangerous; the way of life would be disrupted forever. “Did the labs have enough force to change the tide, to swing the flow of information the other way, to live in the present moment and understand what was truly happening?” Lee shuffled in his brain.

He stood up in a frantic state, but Scott leaned over and grabbed his pant legs and pulled him back down to his cot. He saw Lee's spirit sink down into a bottomless pit. Scott could feel him shaking; the anxiety swelled in a bubble that wrapped up both of them. Lee's hands and feet began to tingle, and he felt a deep weight pressing down on his chest; it felt like he couldn't breathe.

 “This is fine, I'm fine, this is fine.” Lee repeated out loud. The HR SWAT were now pacing in their outlined route, keeping watch on the cogs inside the chain-link fence like zoo animals.

 “Dangerous thinking there…” Scott said. “Calm down there, soldier; this isn't fine. That's what executive leadership wants you to think. They want the common cog to become comfortable, to become complacent, accepting the machine that controls. I have a mouth, so I must scream.”

 “No,” Lee said back; his mouth was stiff, so it sounded like “Nah.”

 “No, what?”

 There was a long pause.

 “Nahh, I need to take a risk. What do I have to lose? I've done pretty well for myself; I've paid my bills, and I've even received a plaque from the IRS for on-time tax submission excellence. My wife and dog are back home waiting for my return. I have some money saved just in case of an emergency; the only thing that matters is my family… I can ‘lose’ everything, and Annie would understand; she would still be proud of me for what I've been able to be. Not only that, but I need to be my true self for once in my actual life; I can't let Tim down…”

 “Who's Tim?”

  A friend of mine, a good guy…” Lee laughed a little. Scott looked satisfied with what Lee had already said.

 “You okay?” Scott asked as he gazed into Lee's eyes, dark brown with a unique star pattern in the iris. “I need your help, Lee, to make this work. You are someone I can trust.”

 “Well, shit Scott, what's the magic word?” Lee said.

 Scott pulled out a notebook and fanned the pages to the one he wanted to show Lee. The page was filled with crude drawings and notes on important landmarks. Lee was impressed; this put him more at ease to see something complete in the hypothetical talks.

 “This is the whole campus?”

 “All of it. I'm still missing the layout of the CEO's building, but that's our end goal anyway.” Scott pointed with his thick middle finger that has seen a lot of hard labor. There was a big box with a star in the middle as the location marker.

 “I guess you're going to find out when you get there, draw it in from me…” Scott said.

 Me? You're not serious; I'm the man that's talking with the CEO?” Lee began to shake again.

 “You’ll be fine, comrade." Scott checked himself and stood up from the pillow; it looked like he was ready to give an army salute. “You're the boss; you've been the manager for 3 years now; you've never done wrong by the team. You said yourself that the only thing you care about in this job is the guys on the team. You openly define what HR strives to force down our throats. I never saw you not back the team first. I know you never wanted this job; it was thrust onto you one winter day. What the hell where you supposed to say? They would have fired you if you said no. No support from Matthew and Joe; they just hide in the hot tent. You never thought of yourself as a boss; you always thought of the team as equals. The best leaders are people who never want to lead because they never crave power from beginning to end. I picked this for you, Lee. It took some convincing from the other lab managers and techs, but I put in a damn good word. If you can handle all the shit in the lab, you can handle the CEO shit.”

 Lee had never heard someone think so highly of him like this. He always thought he was just some common person with common interests; he wasn't anything special. Lee did want to know what the CEO would have to say; he was intensely curious.

  “I don't know what to say,” said Lee.

Scott and Lee huddled in the tent for the rest of the day. Periodically, Scott would stick his head out above the fabric wall and over Stan’s stacks of cardboard boxes and survey for HR SWAT. Both could sense that Stan was inside the wall listening intently. This didn't bother them, as they knew Stan still held onto his virtues.

Joe and Matthew never left the hot tent; they were both busy handwriting copies of resumes and practicing interview questions.

Murphy’s watch shift ended, and Scott and Lee both paused when he walked over with a broomstick. He put the broomstick in a weapons locker made of old test bench aluminum paneling and slowly walked back to his tent.

The end of the day was approaching; the office had settled down. The sun barely hung on, and the cold took its toll. The final few still lingering around the office cooked food and huddled around fires burning pallet wood and flammable objects. They talked about nothing because there was nothing to talk about. They waited for the 8 hours to be up; most of them stared at their wristwatches and cursed themselves for why they couldn't arrive early so at least they would have sunlight when the time was up.

Most employees would find themselves driving home in silence; not even music could soothe the pain and suffering experienced within the office walls. At home they would tell their wives and kids that they had a wonderful and productive day, that the promotion was being processed through HR very soon, and that the CEO really knows how to lead a company during unforeseen times.

The workplace of the future was not some horrid place filled with toxic grease where the husband rots in a homeless-style bed daydreaming about what he should have done after university instead of settling for this job out of fear.

The man drove back to work the next day and checked in with the main entrance guards. A statue was erected in the main welcome lobby (still the only place that looked presentable to the outside world). Father Stemm was cast in bronze in a fine three-piece suit, looking up at the ceiling like he was inspired by the stars. He had one hand tucked into his coat pocket and one pointing straight outward. The man stopped and read the plaque that was on the base:

“A man who sacrificed himself for the betterment of the company. When the company does better, so do the communities that surround it. Father (Remy) Stemm embodied the company's core values. He was a father, a husband, and a devoted employee at Green Earth Solutions. May his actions inspire you. Give yourself to the company so the company can give itself to you. Live with Father Stemm close to your heart.”

The man reading the plague would be inspired. He thought maybe his efforts and devotion would be rewarded in the end. He would be relinquished to the heavens; the others would be damned to hell.